I've spent much of this past weekend dealing with arrangements for my poor car. And part of that is due to my own incompetence.

You see, I managed to have an accident in a similar place on my car 3 1/2 years ago. My insurance company, logically enough, wanted documentation that the repairs were made then so that they didn't end up paying for a prior accident. I figured that I would go home on Friday night, find the documents, fax them in this morning, and then get going right away.

However, I went home and looked through my car file. And looked. And looked. I had records for pretty much every service and repair done in [town containing Big 10 University] EXCEPT for this particular repair. (I DID find the rental car slip, which contained my claim number, but I didn't think that that would be sufficient.) So I called my old company, explained the situation, and was told "your records have been archived. Call back on Monday when they'll be active in the system again."

So, after dropping off my car at the repair shop this morning, I asked them to wait on it until I got the records to my agent. I called the old company, had them fax the check statements to me, faxed them back out of my new company, and tracked my agent down. He agreed that he had what he needed, so I was able to call the body shop and tell them to get started.

But if I'd kept better records to begin with, this would have been started hours earlier.

I'm still hoping I'll have it back on Friday.

And on a related note? My agent informed me that if my deductible had been lower, they'd probably have just totaled the car. So if your car is older and less valuable, consider whether you'd prefer paying $1K and having a car at the end, or having $500 shaved off the value of the car and being presented a check for that amount. I know what I chose.